


and baby when it's love, if it's not rough it isn't fun

by ladyvivien



Category: Dollhouse
Genre: BDSM, F/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-04
Updated: 2010-02-04
Packaged: 2017-10-07 00:40:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/59497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyvivien/pseuds/ladyvivien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>and after he's been hooked, I'll play the one that's on his heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and baby when it's love, if it's not rough it isn't fun

**Author's Note:**

> Major spoilers for 1x09, 'A Spy in the House of Love'. Title &amp; summary courtesy of Lady Gaga

The thing about working for an organisation dedicated to fulfilling fantasies is that you have access to all manner of props.

Silk scarves. A riding crop. Police-issue handcuffs, the kind that bite into your skin if you're not careful and sometimes especially if you are. A variety of other devices, and he can only guess what some of them are for. Everything you need for a sexual sadist persona hired out by one of their clients. Or maybe they were just things that Adelle had lying around the house.

His jacket is on the floor, his shoes off and his feet bare.

Adelle has an epée dangling from one hand, and the other on Echo's shoulder, propriatory and proud. Her little experiment is paying off, it seems. They look so similar, all dark hair and fury and it's painfully clear that the only reason they don't get on is because the only difference between Adelle DeWitt is Caroline Farrell is twenty years and and English accent, and they both know it.

"What do you think, Laurence?" she asks softly. "Shall I let her watch?"

He knows then, that she's seen it in his eyes. The fantasy he won't admit to but that works every fucking time, Adelle's mouth on Echo's (or Caroline's or Taffy's, it doesn't matter, she isn't the important one in this scenario). Sitting on her chair, watching the women on the sofa as they –

"I don't care." He spits the words at her, at Echo who just had to evolve one step further and ruin his life. Probably end it too.

She waves the girl away, and he's relieved in a way she shouldn't be. It's just that, whenever she tortured someone before, it was always with him. He doesn't want some Active in a suit taking his place.

They're alone, finally. She's changed out of whatever she was wearing when she answered the door to them – some kind of nightwear that probably has a French name, trimmed with expensive lace, and into a black dress that clings to every curve of her gorgeous body. It's more appropriate for a dinner date than an interrogation, but from the presence of "Roger's" clothing strewn about the hallway, he knows she doesn't mind mixing business with pleasure.

It's a fucking cliché. Everything about her suggests it – the perilously high heels, the exemplary level of control – it's a running joke with every one of her employees that she needs to be in charge in the bedroom as well as everywhere else. How often has he wanted to wrest that control from her, how often has he imagined her underneath him, all soft moans and sighs and permission?

But there was a flip side of it, a side that imagined this. He always knew he'd get caught, it was just a case of when. Somewhere in between planning for it and covering his ass, he'd wondered exactly what she'd do to him. And how much she'd enjoy it.

He remembers her mentioning that she fenced. So not only is she pissed and holding a sharp, pointy object, it's one she knows how to use. This cannot end well for him.

"So what's the plan here, Adelle?" he asks faux-casually, throwing her first name at her as though he had any right to use it. As though they were still colleagues, still almost-friends instead of a bringer of the apocalypse in expensive shoes and the traitor she'd stupidly trusted. "You going to slice and dice me, or will it be one thrust," here he snickers slightly, just because, "straight through the heart? No," he adds, almost to himself. "No, you're going to draw this out. Make it hurt."

"Pain isn't the point, Laurence," she says quietly. "Trust is."

"Fine," he says, slouching as much as he can in a chair far more comfortable than any he's used in these situations. "What's the safeword? _Tea_?"

She smiles coldly. "Safewords are for lover's games, Laurence. You're not my lover, and I'm not playing."

"You've already lost," he smirks. "Nothing you can do in here changes that fact that the tech is out of control. Get rid of me, the only chance you have of getting through what comes next alive is gone."

"I can take care of myself," she says with a steady gaze. "Which is more than I can say for you, Mr Dominic. Getting caught by an Active? By a broken doll? I'd expected better of you than that. If I'd ever seriously considered the possibility of your betrayal – if I had credited you with that much intelligence – then I would have imagined I'd be the one to discover your little secret. That is, after all, what I do."

"You sell lies," he spits. "Pretty girls telling men what they want to hear. And you fall for them yourself, you think I don't know who's sleeping down the hall?"

She merely nods her head, impressed with his acuity.

"You didn't think I'd find out?" he sneers. "All those trips to Arizona, all those corporate retreats, they were just a smokescreen. You really think I didn't notice how often they coincided with Victor's engagements?"

She looks faintly amused, in that way that only she can. "You really are alarmingly dense, Mr Dominic."

"And yet I've been fooling you for the past three years, so…" he shrugs.

"You were supposed to notice," she says calmly.

"What?"

"You were supposed to notice. To confront me. We'd have argued about the ethics of it, you'd have asked why an attractive and intelligent woman such as myself had to resort to the Dollhouse. I'd have broken down and maybe cried a little about being lonely, you'd have comforted me, and then one thing would have led to another…"

Oh, Jesus _Christ_, this bitch is twisted. "You had a plan."

"I always have a plan."

He snorts. "What if I hadn't taken the bait? Maybe you're not my type. Maybe I'd rather programme Echo to be my perfect girlfriend."

If he'd had a second to see this coming, he would have braced himself for a slap. The kind he's received from countless women he's screwed and screwed over, all self-righteous indignation. None of those women were Adelle DeWitt. His ears are ringing, he thinks for a moment that she broke his cheekbone. He knew how often she worked out. He should have been prepared.

Then she shrugs, as if she couldn't care less. "You've just been unmasked as a spy, you're tied up and you have no reason to believe I won't kill you right here. And yet you still have a hard-on, which leads me to believe that either you find me _extremely_ sexually desirable, or you're even more of a masochist than I thought. Which is it, Mr Dominic?'

"I'm not a masochist," he snarls. "And since you're an uptight, amoral, psychotic bitch, no, you aren't exactly my type."

Rather than be offended, she picks up the tea cup from the table next to her – situated, disturbingly, between the whip and what looks like it could be the harness for a strap-on (when you work for the Dollhouse, you learn all sorts of things you never wanted to know, even when some of them you secretly did). She gives him that warm, friendly smile that strikes fear into the heart of anyone who knows her, because she's always at her sweetest the moment before she strikes.

"Admit it," she purrs. "How often have you thought about me? When did it start? Did you see my picture in the NSA files and think, 'Oh, I can have fun with this one'? Did you go home that night and imagine screwing the information out of me?"

She closes her eyes briefly, allowing another sort of smile to travel across her face, and her hand wanders delicately over her collarbone, as though she were replicating his touch. Just as he's spellbound, her eyes snap open, catching him staring.

"And when you came to work for me, what then? What fantasies did your duplicitous mind come up with, Mr. Dominic? All those years spent as my faithful lapdog – how far would you have let me go?" Her hand moves to the table; long, slender fingers caressing items he's only ever seen during his brief period as a vice cop and even briefer period dating a girl into a certain type of porn.

She selects one, admiring it, stroking it gently, mimicking actions he's imagined a hundred times. He swallows because yeah, the thought of Adelle DeWitt having access to these kind of sex toys is actually pretty hot.

This really is torture. He strains ineffectually against his bonds, not to escape but yank her onto his lap and show her what she's doing to him, but he can't.

"What the hell are you doing, Adelle?" he asks between ragged breaths. "Trying to seduce me? You really think that a roll in the sheets with you is enough to make me hand in my NSA badge and work with you?"

"I'm going to teach you a lesson."

He snorts. "I guess it's better than the Attic."

She puts the toy back down on the table and sips her tea, frowing slightly. "Who said it was an alternative?" Oh God. Oh _God_. The glitter in her eyes makes all his previous fear seem childish in comparison. There's a difference between knowing what comes next and hearing her say it. "I want to be the last memory you will ever have. When you're locked in your own mind, when you can't even remember your own name, I want you to remember this."

"Well, I guess that doesn't leave me with much of a choice, does it?"

"On the contrary." She smiles with eerie coldness. "It's only fun if I can make you beg."

She strips, slowly, down to her underwear, letting him look as long as he likes, turning around slowly as if she were modelling the tiny scraps of black lace that cover her breasts, thong that clings to a perfectly sculpted ass. He feels like a condemned man being presented with his last meal, and realises that that's because he _is_.

"Katherine?" Victor's sleepy voice emerges from somewhere in the shadowy house. He wonders if they're going to have company, if – but no. Adelle DeWitt doesn't like to share her toys, not even with each other. Pity, Victor wasn't bad looking and it would be less of a head fuck than Echo.

"Just a moment, darling," she calls over her shoulder in a sweet, sing-song voice that doesn't sound like hers. "I've got some work business take care of."

"Don't be too long."

"Oh, I won't be," she replies, and she's right – he can't hold out for much longer.

She bends down, giving him a very good look at the cleavage he's been subtly admiring for the past three years. Her nipples are hard beneath the flimsy material, he wonders if that's the chill in the room or his presence. It's a moment's work to unzip him, a few more to manoeuvre his pants far enough down that she can straddle him comfortably.

Whatever hell the Attic holds, it can't be worse than this.

The worst part is how fucking good she feels, hot and tight and wet around him, and he should be feeling less turned on by the fact that he's screwing some Active's sloppy seconds. Whatever she does with that goddamn _gigolo_ is nothing to this. He's seen the imprint – Roger is all flowers and poetry and the obligatory tussle between the sheets with a pair of fluffy handcuffs. It's like she got the idea from _Cosmopolitan_, the perfect mate for the stressed-out career woman. This is different. This is real.

"I want to touch you," he whispers harshly.

"You should have thought of that before you betrayed me."

This is his punishment. The thing he's wanted for so long, longer than he's wanted to admit to himself, and it's literally just out of reach.

"Tell me you're sorry," she hisses through clenched teeth. "Tell me you'll do anything to get back into my good graces. Beg me for forgiveness, Mr Dominic."

"I'd rather die," he spits.

She kisses him fiercely, murmuring something into his mouth that sounds like, "I'd rather you didn't." But the only power he's clinging onto now is the power to tell her to go to hell and accept his fate. It's the one thing that she can't – that she hasn't – taken away from him.

She clenches around him, and he can tell she's close. He's nearly crying with frustration and another emotion he doesn't care to identify, and it's a mystery to him how he's still hard. In the end, it takes the thought of everything he could have had, everything they could have been, to get him off. Her eyes are closed, and he wonders if she's doing the same. With a strangled, angry cry, she comes, nails digging into his arms, green eyes glimmering with what could be tears but is probably triumph.

Before she clambers off him, the only time in their non-relationship that he's ever seen her look ungraceful, she strokes his cheek (still stinging from where she slapped him) in a way that is almost, unnervingly, tender.

"I would have given you this," she murmurs. "I would have given you whatever you wanted, all you had to was ask. To notice the signals. But you didn't. Of course," she adds coolly, "it makes what's about to happen a little easier. It didn't have to be this way, Laurence."

This is the closest she'll ever come to telling him she loves him. And there's a moment, a split-second where he wants ask, to tell her that of course he noticed, how could he not? To tell her that the job – both of them – was the only thing stopping him from pulling her into his arms sometimes. But then he has to suffer the indignity of having her zip up his pants, and he remembers again why he hates her. Of what else she controls.

"Yeah, it did."

He realises that he's missed his last chance of talking his way out of it. But there are some principles worth upholding, even if it's the last thing you'll ever do. If nothing else, Adelle understands that.

She calls Echo back in and he wonders if what just happened was more about getting him so exhausted he can't struggle when the slight brunette unties him and hauls him off the chair as Adelle gives the order to prep him for the Attic and saunters back to the bedroom, back to her tailor-made lover, sword in hand.

As Echo shoves him out of the door, he thinks he can see Adelle's shoulders heave with the beginnings of a sob. But when she sends him to the Attic, even after he shoots her, she's dry-eyed.


End file.
